Ah, yes. If I recall rightly, a comment from a hardcore gamer on the live-action Dungeons and Dragons movie indicated that the beholder monsters are extremely intelligent and have a mind in each of those eye stalks capable of acting independently and firing off some very nasty spells, such that were one to pit two dragons against a beholder in an arena, the beholder would not only wipe out the two dragons, but also whichever half of the audience didn't manage to flee fast enough.

The gamer was complaining because the beholder in the live action film was a real pushover too (easily kept from noticing the heroes when one of them throws a rock to distract it).

I remember, back in my D&D days, the damn beholders were my BANE !!! I HATED those things !!! They were responsible for more character deaths in our campaigns than any other creature we encountered. So of course, our dungeon master went out of his way to have us constantly run into them everywhere we went !!! Jerk !!!